Projektbeskrivningen på engelska: Colon inflammation and cancer are common diseases in Finland and world-wide. Inflammation is a risk factor for colon cancer, and questions still remain regarding molecular development and treatment. Keratins are cytoskeletal stress protectors, and keratin mutationsare known risk factors for human skin and liver diseases. Their roles in intestinal disease are still unclear. Mice lacking the main keratin K8, however, develop a disease that resembles human colitis, supporting that keratins protect also in the intestine. When this model is combined with a known colon cancer mutation, the mice develop abundant tumors uniquely in the colon – similar to the human. We investigate how keratins help maintaining intestinal health and protect from diseases, and how they can be used to model intestinal inflammation and colorectal cancer. We will also start to define the role of kertatins in human intestinal diseases.

Projektbeskrivningen på engelska: Incumbents in authoritarian regimes and new democracies can use a variety of non-programmatic electoral strategies, such as electoral fraud and electoral clientelism, to skew the ‘electoral playing field’ in their favour. However, these electoral strategies are by no means cost-free or necessarily that efficient, and require complex delegation and coordination at several levels of the electoral ‘machine’. This project is part of emerging comparative literature that investigates how various contextual conditions within countries mitigate the delegation problems associated with the coordination of electoral malfeasance and electoral clientelism. These substantively and normatively important questions are investigated with original qualitative and quantitative data, as well as experimental methods. The project has great potential for making important contributions to the comparative literature on democratization and authoritarian politics.

Projektbeskrivningen på engelska: The project focuses on the previously unstudied hundreds of folk magic objects in the collections of Finnish museums. The objectives of the study are to understand material aspects of folk religion in its own context and in a long-term perspective (c. 1200–1900) and to develop the “archaeology of folk religion”. The hypothesis is that believed magical power is formed in a complex combination of material aspects/nature and the human mind/culture. This process is an important part of how the world is experienced, even today. Another premise is that the Finnish tradition of magical objects is not an isolated phenomenon but part of a widespread European tradition.